Sport en middelbaar onderwijs in de VS en Nederland

The author offers an explanation for the different ways in which competitive sport is related to the high schools in the us and the Netherlands. In the us ompetitive sport is integrated in the extra-curricular program of the high schools. In the Netherlands competitive sport is practiced in private clubs which are completely independent of the high schools. If one studies the rigins of this difference at the end of the nineteenth century one sees that in the us, compared with the situation in the Netherlands, the balance of power between the schoolteachers and the pupils was more in the advantage of the pupils. In the Netherlands the teachers were able to push the sportive activities of their pupils outside the borders of the school; in the us this was impossible. The consolidation and continuity in this difference can be explained by the importance of the integrative function sport acquired in the us high schools, which are schools with a more heterogenic body of pupils in terms of talents and social class then most Dutch schools.